Although the Investment Canada Act (ICA) is often criticized for leaving investors and the public in the dark on government decisions regarding proposed foreign investments in Canada, nothing in the Conservative government's platform suggests that the ICA's basic framework will be changed....

There are several mechanisms that countries recur to further integrate their economies. Such mechanisms take normally the form of international agreements, some to cooperate, others to promote and protect investments and most of them to liberalize trade. This paper reviews the international...

The growing stock of foreign investments by sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises poses regulatory challenges to the international investment regime. With arbitrators seemingly keen on expanding the jurisdictional scope of investment treaty arbitration to cover a wide range of...

Free zones have become increasingly popular as trade promotion policy instruments in developing countries. This article explains how the obligations in the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures apply to free zones. An analysis of the most common requirements for companies...

The paper assesses the Singapore issues on economic welfare grounds. It finds that most arguments in favour of a Multilateral Investment Framework (MIF) are not compelling. Further international accords are largely unsubstantiated on economic grounds, with the important exception of the...

This paper comments the EU Commission's proposal COM(2012) 335 final for a Regulation establishing a framework for financial responsibility linked to investor-state dispute settlement and on the study by Professor Tietje commissioned by the European Parliament on the subject. The paper starts by...

Artificial photosynthesis (AP) is an area of well-advanced research involving large international groups at the cutting edge of synthetic biology and nanotechnology. In simple terms it offers to produce a cheap source of hydrogen for fuel through using sunlight to split water, as well as making...

The mechanism of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) allows private foreign investors to challenge government measures before an ad hoc international arbitral tribunal. ISDS has been in existence for a long time. Yet recently this mechanism has proven very controversial, notably in the...

In 2016 and 2017, states continued their engagement with international investment law. A small minority of states displayed scepticism or tried to disengage themselves from their investment law obligations. This chapter addresses select institutional developments in international investment law...

The following paper analyses possible legal and economic arguments supporting the inclusion of an investment chapter in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which is currently on the negotiating agenda. In particular, by looking at some of the former integration efforts and their...